A Purpose Greater Than Ourselves
In discussions about the existence of God, I have often raised the question of why eyebrows and fingernails should have a purpose while the person who possesses them does not? Literally, every cell in the human body serves something bigger than itself but the whole man is left only to serve himself.
Unless there is a power higher than man, a Creator who loves us and has a purpose for having brought us into existence, there can be no consistency on this point between the many parts and the whole.
Surely, the vast work of creation suggests a higher purpose for mankind, the pinnacle of it all. Surely, whoever gave each part such a specific role to play has a purpose for the whole. Surely, there is more meaning to our lives than maximizing our pleasure.
But that is all we’re left with should we scrub God from our collective consciousness. To have a purpose beyond ourselves, there must be a God who loves us and created us to love Him in return. Short of this, we end up with a universe full of parts, carefully designed to serve something higher, but the beneficiary of all those parts, man, with no transcendent purpose.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38, ESV).
Scrutinizing Seashells
My two-year-old granddaughter watched with great interest as her big sister and I hunted for seashells during a family day at the beach. When she asked if she could try, I plopped her down on a pile of shells and she went right to work. Immediately, without any instructions or coaching, she held up one seashell at a time and scrutinized it. Those that passed her inspection went into the bucket but those that didn't were tossed over her shoulder. I marveled over her decisiveness and I wondered what possible criteria does a two-year-old use to discern the worthiness of one shell over another.
So, I stole a peek at her booty. There were a number of perfect shells in her bucket but there were far more defective shells; shells with holes in them; shells that had been worn by the surf; shells that were chipped and broken; shells that would never have made it into my bucket. There didn't appear to be a rhyme or a reason for what made it into my granddaughter's bucket. Rather, the collection seemed to be random. Like someone had just scooped them up and dumped them in there.
If the ways of a two-year-old are mysterious, how much more are the ways of God?
Have you ever looked into the bucket of things that make up your life and wondered, "How'd that get in there?" Are there things in your life that you would have never selected for yourself? Does your life ever feel random to you, with no rhyme or reason to it? Like someone just scooped them up and dumped them in there?
But that isn't at all the case. Every shell in your bucket has been handpicked; every shell has been scrutinized; every shell has passed God's inspection. All the details of your life, your circumstances and the people you know have passed the mysterious criteria of the Eternal One, of God Himself.
Who can possibly begin to see what God sees, or judge things by His criteria? No, ours is not to understand what God places in our bucket. Ours is to trust that each shell has been placed there with some purpose.
If you can't understand the mind of a two-year-old, how do you expect to understand the mind of God?
"Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!" (Romans 11:33, NLT).
Praying In The Wrong Direction
The Daily Mail reports that worshipers at a mosque in Turkey have been praying in the wrong direction for 37 YEARS! According to one news outlet, the mosque was built facing the wrong direction in 1981.
To make matters worse, it is believed that this was the result of it being built based on the original mosque, which would mean that these worshipers have not been praying in the direction of Mecca, as prescribed, even longer than previously thought.
As Christians, we understand that it doesn't really matter what direction we face when we pray. God is everywhere. Rather, it's our earnest determination to seek God and to know His will that Jesus promised to bless when He said, "Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7).
We pray in the wrong direction when we pray for the wrong things, or when we pray for the right things but with the wrong motives. We pray in the wrong direction whenever we seek our will instead of God's.
"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us" (1 John 5:14).